Rightio.
Well, graphics lies pretty close to my heart, and thus, makes me want to be all mushy and share my experience.

When I started out here in the VE, I was pretty much screwed up with graphics. Couldn’t do anything, nada.  I remember, I was quite overwhelmed with everything the VE graphic members did, and I pretty much tried a lot to come near their skill level.

I’ve seen various members here trying their hand with it as well, and in the process make some small yet very basic mistakes that influence the quality of their work.

Everything, in this thread will be done using the Gimp program, a freeware tool that anyone can download.  Here: http://www.download.com/GIMP/3000-2192_4-10073935.html

I myself, haven't really used Gimp, so this is a learning curve for me as well considering software. But I hope that with this thread you will be able to learn more about some basic design principals, because that really makes a difference.

Basic design principles includes some of the following:

• Composition
• Color
• Concept
• Quality

As I stumble upon more random thoughts concerning these principles, I'll mention them.


A designer’s success doesn’t depend on the flashy fancy program he uses, but most obviously his skill. The flashy program is just the cherry on the cake I believe.

I’ve seen amazing things being done in MSpaint for example.

I will not be doing this tut in one go, but rather do it, week by week, day by day, give other fellow members to post their own set of hints and tips, or for others to ask questions. For the members who are posting their hints and tips, please take in mind that while you may have photoshop or Fireworks, it doesn’t mean everyone does, so keep your advice friendly, unless another member has a specific software related question.

So, what involves the process  from going from this:


to this: ?


One of the most common problems I’ve encountered on this forum with images is the following:


The problem here is the following:

• The font is blurry and just not easily readable.
• The image itself is scaled in wrong proportions, and just simply squashed.

All in all, it looks ugly and dysfunctional.

What most likely has happened here is either:

• You applied font to the image while it was still in its original size.
• You then merged the layers or whatever before scaling it to 100x120
• After that, you noticed that your image didn’t fit in with the size limits of the Comnet, so you most likely brought down the quality as well.

This is how you could have approached the process:

1.If you’re image is very wide, crop it a bit till the height is more dominant in size.

2.That means going from:



To this:



All with simple cropping. So now, the image is still big.

3.Next, size it down to the 100x120 dimensions.
4.Now you can add text without the risk of text going blurry.

5.Merge the layers, save it as GIF and this would be the end result:



Hi, now, it aint flashy, but lookie, the text looks alot better, though I'd say the composition and size definitely needs a bit of jazzing up.

Ah...you've noticed the grainy texture as well?
I exported the Gimp image to Gif. It doesn't have the same compression capability as JPEG, and somewhere along the line, you lose that tiny bit of image quality. That's why its important to beforehand pick an image high quality. Take a look at the original image, you'll already notice it is grainy as well.

Of course, there most likely is a way around the grain issue, by fiddling around with your image modes and compression types, but for now, lets stick to the basics.

Thank you for reading this far.
ANyone is welcome to ask questions, post comments as well as post their own set of tips and hints what helps them, I will continiue to tackle this thread with new information regualry.
Until then,

Happy third of September

Whoa, I'm so glad you posted this. I took your advice almsot instantly after reading it and update dmy Avatar, as you can see on the Left.

I really enjoy working with GIMP, I guess it's an addiction. (Though I haven't gone through convulsions without it, so I don't think it's that severe.). Anyway, enough of the small talk, I do have a question:

I am big on Fonts, I think the best part of making an avatar is putting someones Nick on it( which to me is like personlaizing it, and that just; I don't know makes me feel like I've accomplished something.) But I was wondering, how do you give lettering special effects, like make them look shiny, or three-d ish?

OOC:

For those without GIMP

Starting with from http://images.fandango.com/r80.6/ImageRenderer/375/250/nox.jpg/p266610/images/masterrepository/performer%20images/p266610/reextinction15.jpg, I made two crops in MS Paint.  Nothing fancy, just the Select tool from the toolbar, Copy, New and Paste.

and
I'll get to crop2 later.  By clicking Image and selecting Attributes I see crop1 is 189px wide by 249px high.  ComNet wants 100x120 only; everthing else is squished or stretched to fit.

Clicking OK or CANCEL closes the Attributes screen and my next step is to click Image and select Stretch/Skew.  Here I change both the horizontal and vertical values to 60% (in hindsight i should have tried 50).

Checking crop1a the Attributes are now 114 x 150.  These are still good numbers to work with.  I need to reduce the height by 1/5 or 20%.  To keep the proprtions right I change both values to 80%.

crop1b is now 92 x 120.  The height is perfect but the image is too narrow.  Going into Attributes again I change the width to 100px.

crop1c is now th 100 x 120 that we need and the white border can be covered by whatever border or name tag we want to add.

Now back to crop2.  It measures 153 x 231, which is better than the 189px wide by 249px of crop1.  In Stretch/Skew I experiment & Undo the 55%, settling instead for 52% for both values. 

crop2a is a very nice 80 x 121.  While still in Attributes (from checking) I edit the values to 100 x 120 for crop2b.

The broad white border can be changed in color and text added, or coverd as described earlier.
crop2b  crop1c


starmy1a
i also experimented with resizing an old avvie.

I'm guessing it was made in Paint...But you might want to confirm that.

Hello I am new here but I am looking to help out greatly in the area of graphics since it to lies close to my heart as well and is an area of study for me since the 9th grade. I personally favor the use of Photoshop since there are many things that you can do if you know who to use it right. Below are just some of the example of my work that can be done easily using Photoshop.

Original Picture:


My Edit:


Lightsaber Hilt made using PS:


Planet and Space Backdrop made using PS:


Photoshop can also be used the make animated .gif images which can be usefully when making a recruitment banner that will catch peoples attention.

Original:


Animated:

Well yes I got CS4 for cheaper because I am a college student. But I am will to create graphics for anyone as long as it is VE related....graphics is my biggest skill and I hope the VE will benifit from it in the future